It depends on how this is implemented, but there is a lot of good that could come from reform.
Many ex-offenders have trouble finding employment. This sometimes leads to them towards a life of crime, or being dependent on taxpayer-funded welfare.
This is true. Many sentences that are not that long for crimes not that bad end up being life sentences, because they then become unemployable outside jail. Originally, once someone has "paid their dues" to society, they were allowed to continue on. But with background checks and everyone having a permanent record, that is no longer the case. We look around at the poor today, and think "why can't they just get a job?" Many of them have a glass ceiling over them.
I’ve employed black and white excons. Regardless of which, excons tend to have real unresolved anger and restraint issues. As an employer I cannot afford an employee who snaps, threatens another employee or a customer, or does violence. My liability is too large.
The first thing to be reformed is families - dad, mom, marriage, commitment - the next is prisons. That they’re hell holes is a testament to the failure of the state. They shouldn’t allow the least bit of vulgarity, let alone violence, murder and rape.
I’d like to see a free market in prisons that would let prisoners self-select certain prisons and programs. They would be run by behaviorists with strict and serious consequences for internal violators. The goal to positively reinforce mature, restrained behavior. Part of the problem of these young men is a lack of maturity and self-restraint. Extrinsic controls just cannot provide enough corrective. There has been some success with prisoners and animal husbandry.
They choose to return to crime. At the same time minimum wage laws, permitting, licensing and zoning punish the most at-risk workers. If you could hire prisoners for a dollar a day in no time those that truly want to work would be gainfully employed at minimum wage or better.
Some of our excon workers were excellent. One threatened to kill me and he’d just gotten out for murder a few months earlier. He was fired and we took care of his threat privately. Nothing ever came of it, but how many employers would ever go back after that kind of wild eyed nut who really could and had carried out a murder threatened them?
He was strong as an ox and did demo work. He was fearless nearly to the point of recklessness, but not that fearless. Hence my still being alive today. His brother, also an excon, turned out to be a terrific worker and moved on to better things.